


Where the Wind Takes Us

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Essos, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Free Cities, Gen, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Canon, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-17 03:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3512888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the events of <em>A Dance with Dragons</em>, Jaime and Brienne arrive in the Free Cities to look for Arya Stark. </p><p>A storm blows their ship all the way to Volantis, forcing our intrepid knights to go about their quest the long way around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Volantis

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic before WOIAF came out and chose not to edit any details which are contradicted by WOIAF – the companion volume often contradicts itself as well as book canon, and I wanted to keep the Free Cities as I imagined them and as we know them from ASOIAF. I own nothing.

Foreigners were unwelcome in Old Volantis across the Long Bridge, which struck Jaime Lannister as no great loss. The soft lords and ladies of the old city were unlikely to know any news, however dubious or stale, about the whereabouts of a Westerosi maid of two-and-ten, long of face and dark of hair. 

Humanity thronged the bridge’s western end: the unwashed, the perfumed, and those who were both. Silk-clad merchants from the Jade Sea, city guards sporting tiger-stripe tattoos and fierce expressions, various other slaves, sailors and mercenaries ranging from palest ivory to hairiest Ibbenese. 

The long, unfruitful morning had taken Jaime and Brienne to every shop on the bridge, where they’d attempted to describe Arya Stark through limited High Valyrian and elaborate gestures to merchants with the manners of fishwives and the airs of upjumped lordlings. The pair had worked their way up one side of the bridge and down the other. At midday, in the humid heat, Jaime had sent up a brief, cockeyed prayer of thanks to the Seven that he’d convinced Brienne to leave most of their armor at the inn, and don only boiled leather and chainmail. Even so, sweat trickled down Jaime’s temples, dampened his hair, dripped occasionally off the end of his nose. He blended in fine with the stinking crowd.

Or he would have, but for the fact that Westerosi were rare this far east. Westerosi knights traipsing about as a pair, one handless, the other a woman, were as good as a mummer’s show. 

A retinue of gabbing urchins had swelled in their wake throughout the morning, until a minor throng stood in a tight half-circle in the middle of the market lapping the western end of the Long Bridge. The urchins were interspersed with grinning tiger cloaks, tittering whores, even the odd slave, a rare spark in their hangdog eyes. With the Volantene fleet off besieging the Dragon Queen in her Slaver’s Bay holdfast, Volantis teemed with children and old men. Even the tiger cloaks in the cluster of amused faces were little more than youths.

In the center of the gathering, Brienne of Tarth was feeding fruit to a dwarf elephant.

Jaime had grinned when she’d exchanged one of their honors with its dual motif of crown and skull for a few handfuls of ripe, succulent treats, the obvious japes the transaction allowed him to make a welcome breath of familiarity in this strange city. Before they’d set sail on their fool’s quest, Jaime’s sole knowledge of Volantis had been that the Volantene – rather, their slaves – made fine wine, and that Aerys Targaryen had tried and failed to procure a Volantene bride for his son, while Jaime had been a squire still. The city’s many oddities provided sufficient challenge without wondering how Jaime’s life might have turned out had Steffon Baratheon been successful in _his_ quest. 

Brienne had ignored Jaime’s japes just as she ignored the laughing throng now, too busy cooing to the snow-white animal and stroking its trunk while it ate greedily. 

The driver of the _hathay_ to which the elephant was harnessed gabbed at Brienne with increasingly emphatic gestures of his strong, sun-browned hands.

“We don’t have enough honors between us to purchase that animal, Brienne,” Jaime called out over the crowd’s noise and the driver’s imprecations. 

Brienne’s hand stilled on the elephant’s trunk. “Purchase?”

“My Gutter Valyrian is rusty, but I believe that is the gist of this fellow’s ire,” Jaime replied dryly. “Why else would you be feeding the creature? Or are you trying to shame this man for a cruel master in front of half of Volantis?”

Brienne began to back slowly away from the elephant and its driver, who flushed and made as if to strike Brienne with his whip. The crowd jeered and heckled. 

Jaime had anticipated as much: a laughing crowd could quickly turn vicious, from crowns to skulls. He plunged swiftly through the throng, hooked his maimed arm around Brienne’s left elbow and spun her out of harm’s way, pulling his sword out of its scabbard just a hand’s span, enough to let the _hathay_ driver see the blade’s gleam in the merciless sun. 

The man ceased his angry chatter and scratched his head with his whip, as unthreatening a gesture as he could manage. He must not have wanted to attract the tiger cloaks’ attention. Out of the corner of his eye, Jaime saw the tattooed guards’ posture shift, from amused and relaxed to alert but still relaxed. The city watch would not intervene so long as neither Jaime nor the driver moved against each other. With a sharp grin and obscenities no one save Brienne understood murmured in the tone of a man who’d lost track of the time and must regrettably depart pleasant company with all haste, Jaime backed himself and Brienne away from the _hathay_ , until they could slip into the market crowd unmolested. 

None sought to detain them save the elephant, which put out its trunk after Brienne and gave a forlorn little honk. 

They were nearly back to their inn – a discreet, dilapidated establishment in the vicinity of the opulent and pungent Merchant’s House – before Brienne opened her mouth.

“We do not need an elephant,” Jaime said. 

Brienne wavered half a step, didn’t close her mouth.

“The thrice-damned animal must eat more than you do, and would be no help to us when we try to secure cheap passage to Lys,” Jaime argued. 

Brienne shut her mouth, thought for the space of five paces, then opened it again. 

“We will talk to that waterfront widow, or whatever in seven hells they call her, later today,” Jaime went on smoothly. “I’ll grant you that an elephant might make a suitable bribe for the old hag, but it would compel us to sell ourselves as shipboard slaves to get to Lys, where she will undoubtedly advise us to go. A few of my diminishing host of gold dragons will do as well to loosen her tongue.”

Brienne’s expression turned mulish, but she said nothing. Jaime smiled at her. He was quite keen to head back in a westerly direction. Volantis lay far from Slaver’s Bay, yet too close to Aerys Targaryen’s daughter’s power base for Jaime’s liking.

“I suppose I should be grateful you took a fancy to feeding elephants, not buying up and freeing slaves, wench,” Jaime murmured. 

Brienne blushed, not just with the heat. “There are so many,” she said, low and sorrowful. 

Jaime tipped his head up in midstride, kissed her scarred cheek. “I know. I’d wager the elephant was grateful.”

Though he was little more than a questing hedge knight now, Jaime had grown up wealthy. Yet he found Brienne’s laughter to be a wonder and a luxury the likes of which proud Volantis could only dream of.


	2. Lys

“This one doesn’t have a cock!” the painted whore crowed.

Her even more painted friend did not stop smiling up at Jaime as she replied with a low, throaty chuckle, the Common Tongue heavily accented in her mouth, her intention clear. “How sweet. A man with no cock. My favorite.” The woman had very fair skin and long flaxen hair, like most Lyseni. Her eyes were as blue as the sea at twilight, heavily marked with kohl. Her rouge ran into the runnels age had etched around her lips, which the rouge was supposed to conceal.

Brienne stood frozen with the first whore’s hand pressed brazenly against her breeches. The whore gave Brienne a squeeze. Brienne swallowed a terrified whimper. She did not wish to do the unarmed woman harm, but neither could she stand this indignity much longer. 

Intoxicated revelers swirled around the four of them, paid them no heed – a few gropes were nothing unusual during the yearly carnival honoring the local love goddess of many names. People rutted on every street corner. A few feet away from Brienne and the whore who held her captive, the even more painted whore reached up to tug at Jaime’s beard. 

“ _You_ have a cock,” she said sweetly. “I’ll handle it any way you like, if you let me hold on to this.” Her fingers wove nimbly through Jaime’s beard, while Brienne tried unsuccessfully to sidle away from her captor. 

Jaime gave his whore a thin smile. In a trice, his hand was wrapped around the whore’s wrist. He grunted as he twisted her arm behind her back, and she tore several silver-gold hairs out of his beard. Bent nearly double, the woman could only spit curses in a motley of languages, while Jaime held her immobile against him, her arm twisted at a painful angle. 

The other whore let go of Brienne and reached inside her bodice. Brienne grabbed the woman’s arms before she could reach whatever weapon was concealed there, held her with only as much force as Brienne needed to restrain her erstwhile captor. 

“Now,” Jaime said lightly while the woman in his arms gasped imprecations, turning purple under her makeup. He addressed the whore in Brienne’s custody. “You give my companion back her moneybag before your friend breaks her own arm struggling, there’s a good lad.”

Jaime’s whore stopped trying to get away, hung in his arms limp as a fish. 

Brienne gasped. As though Jaime’s words had removed an enchantment, she saw it now by the light of a torch in a nearby wall sconce: the strong yet smooth jaw, the bobbing apple in the perfumed throat of the youth she held fast. She nearly loosened her grip in surprise. Nearly. 

“We are free Lyseni,” the youth insisted, his accent thickened by distress. “Do you know what they’d do to filthy Westerosi sellswords who harmed us?”

Jaime mimed a yawn, moved his hand a thumb’s length down his captive’s arm. The woman whimpered in pain. Brienne nearly told Jaime to stop it until she remembered tales of the Lyseni propensity for poisons – in wine cups, on cleverly painted lips and sharpened nails, on dagger points.

When Brienne had her moneybag back and the painted whore had helped his older friend limp away, casting dark glances back Jaime’s way, Brienne counted out her small store of oval Lyseni coins with some distaste. None were missing. All sported the same sculpted naked woman which adorned most flat surfaces in the city. Women writhed on the door lintels of numerous brothels, coiled around iron spikes on the tops of pleasure gardens’ walls, thronged thick as sheaves of wheat on the walls of the many-named love goddess’ temple in the city center. 

“Free Lyseni,” Jaime snorted. “Slaves belonging to some moderately ambitious brothel keeper who sends them out to prowl for custom rather than wait for it to come to them.” 

“They looked after each other,” Brienne murmured, retying her moneybag and slipping it inside her jerkin rather than hang it from her belt again. The bag made an awkward lump between her small breasts. 

Jaime’s maimed arm slipped around Brienne’s waist, guided her out of the way of a group of revelers braying a sea shanty as they careered from one tavern to another across the street. 

“Perhaps going out to take in the local color was a poor idea,” Jaime murmured close to Brienne’s ear. “I thought the carnival might stir your blood, wench, but I think we should repair back to our inn now.” 

Jaime’s eyes glittered in the smoky, torch-lit darkness in a way which sent a flush of heat to Brienne’s cheeks. 

Brienne averted her gaze, stayed pressed close to Jaime’s side. A pair of indeterminate sex, one standing, the other kneeling in shadow cast by a rain barrel, was now in her line of sight. Brienne closed her eyes.

“I do not require Lyseni festivals to stir my blood, Jaime,” Brienne whispered, blushing furiously. “No more than I would pretend that my honor is preserved or damaged by some things we might do, and not others.”

The storm winds which blew always around the islands on which Lys perched, had afflicted Jaime with an intense bout of greensickness during the voyage from Volantis. Only mildly affected herself, Brienne had cared for him, wiped vomit from his face and chest, given him water and dry ship’s biscuit when he could keep them down, even pillowed Jaime’s head on her breast because he’d claimed the sound of Brienne’s heart drowned out the roaring of the waves in his ears. 

“I would not ask more of you than you would give me willingly, my lady,” Jaime had muttered once, deep in the howling night, half delirious with fever and lack of water. “Never think that.”

Jaime had kissed her first on the ship which had brought them from Westeros to Volantis. Since then, they had exchanged many an unmaidenly kiss. Brienne had learned how hands and skin and hair could kiss in their own right, render her breathless and oblivious to how ludicrous she must look and sound, though Jaime’d called her his treasure more than once, his breath cooling her heated, sweaty brow. 

Brienne opened her eyes, turned her head to face Jaime. She did not feel like any man’s treasure, but Jaime was not just any man. He knew his mind and his heart, and Brienne trusted him even when she did not fully trust herself. 

“We may retire, if you like.” The words nearly stuck in her throat, wanting to rush out yet remain unspoken. “To the inn.”

Jaime’s grin was as palpable on Brienne’s skin as his fingers brushing the back of her hand. “So the rumors I heard in Volantis were in earnest. Lys really _is_ the easiest of the Free Cities.” 

Brienne found comfort in rolling her eyes and hearing Jaime’s chuckle: anticipation, joy, pleasure, all in one. A port in a storm.


	3. Tyrosh

“Brienne,” Jaime said affably. “Shut your mouth.”

Brienne went on staring at him, her thick-lipped mouth open so wide Jaime could see something half masticated on her tongue: the other half of the oblong yellow cake called honeyfingers sitting on Brienne’s plate. There had been five such cakes before her when Jaime had left her at this seaside tavern and slipped away, citing a vague errand. Brienne’s small glass of Tyroshi pear brandy sat untouched beside a nearly empty cup of ale so pale it may as well have been water.

Knowing his innocent wench, it probably _was_ water fetched from some none-too-clean well and sold to the naïve Westerosi as ale. 

“I speak only out of concern for your health, wench.” Jaime threw one leg over the bench opposite Brienne and stole what remained of her uneaten cake. “If you keep gaping like that, every fly for a hundred leagues will find you and fly right in. Flies from every dung heap in the Disputed Lands and their cousins feasting on every bloated corpse washed up on the Stepstones will follow. You might never shut your mouth again.” 

With a snap of teeth, Brienne shut her mouth. Her eyes remained very wide and round. 

Jaime scratched his chin while the sweet, spongy cake melted on his tongue. The bright blue dye in his beard itched even after he’d washed it out with rosewater. The sunset-red dye staining his moustache was little better. Jaime scratched his blue hair next, considered advising Brienne on the desirability of blinking every once in a while. 

Brienne took a deep breath. “Why…”

“I thought you’d never ask. Look around us, wench.” 

Jaime gestured at the teeming wharves, the Bleeding Tower a black monolith casting its squat shadow across the harbor entrance, the brightly colored heads of local menfolk, topped by the silk pennants of at least a dozen different sellsword companies which sought to recruit new members in the city.

“Finally we are in a city where the only people who outnumber the slaves are the sellswords. The damned alliance with Lys against Myr might last or not. If it does, I might hire myself out to one of the companies preparing to besiege Myr. Not my preferred way of getting there, but better than nothing. Or maybe the alliance breaks, and Tyrosh gets back into bed with Myr. Then we might gain access to it more easily if I look like one of Myr’s new favored allies. 

“Either way, with the speed these Essosi do everything, we’re like to spend another moon’s turn kicking ourrrr heels rrright herrre.” Jaime affected a fair approximation of the growling accent with which native Tyroshi spoke the Common Tongue. “We might as well try to blend in.” 

Brienne’s expression was still dubious, but she was thinking through Jaime’s reasons. He picked up her glass of pear brandy while he waited. A quick sniff told Jaime he’d be vastly better off ordering the same piss-ale Brienne was drinking. The brandy had a thick, cloying scent which might hide all manner of poisons – their time in Lys had left Jaime skittish about such things – and was simply too much after the sticky honey cakes. 

“I thought…” Brienne stared at the table thoughtfully, her cheeks pink, the ruined one darker than the other. She took another deep breath. “I thought you would want to leave at once, after what we learned about… that juggler.”

Jaime grimaced: the last vestiges of the honeyfinger stuck to the roof of his mouth. 

The tale of the old dwarf juggler who’d been beheaded, cut into three pieces, and stuffed into the mouths of the three-headed Tyroshi god’s statue in the main city square, had put Jaime off his food for several days, sunk him in a black, brooding mood for even longer. He’d known since before they’d left Westeros that Tyrion was somewhere across the Narrow Sea. As big as Essos was, Jaime couldn’t help craning his neck whenever he spotted a small figure waddling away down some dank alley or across a crowded marketplace. The possibility of Tyrion’s death had occurred to Jaime, hadn’t really stayed with him – his little brother was entirely too clever for an easy demise. 

The possibility that Tyrion would not thank Jaime for keeping an eye out for him was ever present. Jaime kept looking regardless. 

Brienne had tried leaving Jaime alone with his dark thoughts, she’d tried gentle coaxing, she’d even tried blushing kisses and fumbling caresses. Finally she’d sat beside Jaime on the floor of their temporary abode – he’d been sitting on the floor because the straw pallet had felt too comfortable in his raw, angry state – taken Jaime’s hand, and said softly, “Jaime, remember that you are no craven.” 

Brienne’s soft bluntness, her blunt softness had got through to Jaime, as it had once before, during another time he loathed to remember. He had turned their linked hands over and kissed Brienne’s knuckles. He’d eaten and washed, and shared the pallet with Brienne that night. On the morrow, he had ensconced Brienne at a table before a sun-kissed tavern near the wharves, with a plate of honeyfingers before her, and gone to get his hair and beard dyed. 

Jaime reached for Brienne’s cup, washed away the cloying sweetness at the back of his throat with her last mouthful of thin ale. 

“I would gladly hire us a ship to take us to Myr at once,” Jaime said, turning the cup around and around on the table scored by many daggers. “But we are low on coin, and with the Three Daughters intent on acting as sisters often do, we are like to stay in Tyrosh a while yet.” He scratched his chin again, grinned. “I’ve always wondered how I would look as a bluehair.”

Brienne’s huff sounded as exasperated as ever, but her hand on Jaime’s was warmer than sunlight.


	4. Myr

Brienne ran her forefinger down the length of the crossbow carved with coiling dragons and rearing griffins. The carvings were shallow and exquisite, and sat oddly on the massive, unwieldy crossbow, nearly the length of a broadsword. It could fire three quarrels at once: a formidable weapon, a weapon for a giant. 

Myr was renowned for the skill of its crossbowmen. Brienne wondered about their training. Most men she’d seen in the city were slim of build and moderately tall, did not seem remotely capable of wielding such a weapon. 

She stood contemplating the crossbow and whether she could inquire about the training it required without suggesting she wanted to buy the weapon, while the stall owner gabbed at her merrily in a mixture of the Common Tongue and Myr’s distinct dialect of High Valyrian. When they’d disembarked in the city a sennight ago, Jaime had japed that in Volantis people spoke garbled High Valyrian, in Lys they trilled like mockingbirds, while the Tyroshi growled. But the Myrish spoke Myrish. 

Jaime hated bowmen and crossbowmen alike, but this was a puissant weapon. Brienne hefted the end of the crossbow cautiously, not wanting to lay claim to it by lifting it entirely off the stall. It was as heavy as a cudgel. 

A shadow wafted over Brienne, something soft landed on her head, causing her to unsuccessfully stifle a yelp and drop the end of the crossbow. It thunked against the stall, sending its seller into a paroxysm of pure Myrish. 

Brienne fought her way clear of the bolt of cloth which had assaulted her, turned with it still trailing around her neck and shoulders to see Jaime grinning at her from a safe distance, green eyes twinkling like a mischievous boy’s. 

“Silks and lace suit you ill, wench, but it does match your eyes,” he taunted. 

Brienne glanced down at the cloth, saw the blue lace for which the city was renowned, thick as fishermen’s nets yet delicate as a maiden’s sigh. It lay against Brienne’s old chainmail as incongruous as a blue winter rose on a mud pie. Brienne attempted to dislodge the lace without having it snag and tear on the links of her chainmail. 

“Jaime,” she complained, twisting to get free and ignoring the crossbow seller’s imprecations. “If we couldn’t afford a dwarf elephant, we cannot afford a bolt of Myrish lace too torn to resell or use for anything.” 

“Alas, you are right. I shall have to wear it as your favor,” Jaime replied, unrepentant. 

Brienne ducked her head, lifted a looped armful of lace over her head, stalked toward the lace seller’s stall to return it, making sure it didn’t drag on the cobblestones. 

Unlike the crossbow seller, the woman behind the lace stall regarded the proceedings with a disinterested eye, knowing idlers when she saw them and saving her energy for real customers. She sipped Myr’s fabled pale green wine from a glass goblet. Now that Brienne was close enough to return the lace and smile apologetically, she saw the woman’s eyes sported a glazed look, though it was not yet midday. 

The woman showed a hint of animation when she waved off Brienne’s clumsy attempts to fold the lace nicely. She set about rearranging her wares, her goblet abandoned for the nonce. 

Brienne pointed at the green liquid. “You will be wearing this green, which matches _your_ eyes, if you keep this up, Jaime.” 

Jaime blew her a noisy, smacking kiss and chuckled in response, hooked his maimed arm through Brienne’s – they always walked side by side so Brienne’s right hand and Jaime’s left were free to draw swords if necessary – and led a zigzagging way across the crowded marketplace. The last traces of blue and red dye had not yet washed out of his hair and beard. That, coupled with Brienne’s height and scars elicited some curious looks, but most people were too wrapped up in their trades and gossip and grievances to pay much mind. Westerosi were not as uncommon in Myr as they were farther east. In good weather, the journey across the Narrow Sea was most easily accomplished between Westeros and Myr or Pentos.

Brienne’s eyes wandered westward, from which direction the cries of gulls and sailors’ rough voices raised in song wafted on a mild sea breeze. If she went that way and found a ship, she could be on Tarth before the moon turned. 

The thought squeezed her heart like a fist. Tarth would be there, but nothing on it would be as Brienne remembered: her father was dead, his hall burned down, a new lord installed in his place. Some captain of the Golden Company with a thimbleful of noble blood, legitimized by the new court in King’s Landing, ruled Tarth now. 

Brienne felt wryly, sadly amused to think that she shared with the people of Myr a visceral mislike of the Golden Company, which had broken a contract for the first time in its history when it had abandoned Myr in favor of a Targaryen pretender just over a year earlier. Jaime’s sister’s execution had followed swiftly after the news of Selwyn Tarth’s death during the Golden Company’s sack of Tarth. Darker words following dark ones, joining forces to harry Jaime and Brienne on their departure for Essos. 

Jaime’s son, no longer king, sat behind the walls of his goodfather’s keep in the Reach, while a dragonless Targaryen sported on the Iron Throne, his court composed of mercenaries and lickspittle minor lordlings. A Targaryen in Westeros and another in Slaver’s Bay – sometimes, if she let herself dwell on it, Brienne wondered where she and Jaime might take Arya Stark if they ever did find her, which seemed unlikely. They had heard no rumor about a Westerosi maid long of face and dark of hair, in Myr or anywhere else. 

Brienne accepted that her last vow was a futile, worn-out thing, but there was nothing else left for her or for Jaime. Their quest kept them moving and searching, kin to the foolish knights errant from the songs she had used to love. 

“Look, wench! Far-eyes!” 

With an ‘oof’ of escaping breath, Brienne was tugged off course, toward a stall selling fine glass. Jaime loosed his hold on her to pick up a Myrish eye and press it to his eye, supporting the long bronze tube on his stump, turning to follow a seagull’s soaring course across the sky. He let out a long ‘aaaaaaaaah’ a child with a new toy would have envied. 

“You like?” the stallholder asked Brienne, seeing that Jaime was lost to the world, his mouth under the far-eye hanging open in guileless wonder as he craned his head back to follow the seagull. “Fine work, Myrish glass. I make good price.”

“Yes,” Brienne replied, watching Jaime. “I do like.” 

A raucous chorus of drunken voices erupted from a nearby tavern: “I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair…” Only the voices had changed a few words to make the song bawdy. 

Brienne shook her head, blushing softly, thinking she might alter the words too, so the song was about a knight as fair as summer. Perhaps her vow to Lady Catelyn was not the only thing she had left in the world. 

Brienne turned to the stallholder, prepared to drive a hard bargain for the far-eye. She schooled her features into a stern scowl, put out a hand to grab Jaime’s elbow lest he wandered off in pursuit of other distant sights in the sky.


	5. Pentos

Jaime swore long and fervently, keeping his voice lower than he would have liked. He really wanted to rage and break crockery.

Threading their way north along the western coast of Essos, Jaime and Brienne had left the humid heat of Volantis and Lys behind them, yet the weather continued to seem unseasonably warm to those who had slogged through snow in the Riverlands and King’s Landing at the very beginning of what had promised to be a true bastard of a Winter. The air in Pentos was pleasantly balmy, if cut by frequent squalls blown in from the Narrow Sea. The briny rain washed away some of the city’s dust. Jaime and Brienne usually slept with the window of their hired garret wide open to a night full of, if not the patter of rain, the sounds of nightingales and singing cats. 

The rain was not their friend at the moment. It limited visibility in the narrow, twisty alleys backing on to the mansion of whichever city magister was hunting them. The humidity made Jaime sweat inside his boiled leather, was no friend to the keenness of their blades. They needed to run farther before they could chance sheathing their swords. 

Panting, Brienne leaned against the wall beside Jaime. Jaime realized with a guilty pang that they had both allowed themselves to go soft in the Free Cities. So many people to ask if they’d seen a girl fitting Arya Stark’s description, so many markets to stroll through, so many opportunities to spend the whole morning abed in whatever rundown inn they happened to call home. Too many temptations taking them away from regular sparring sessions. 

Thanks be to whatever treacherous gods looked after them, Brienne’s instincts had guided her hand before Jaime had so much as drawn steel. Elsewise she would have been slumping against the wet brick wall all alone, and there would be one more man in pursuit. For her trouble, Brienne had earned a cut just under her hairline: it looked shallow, but it bled profusely. Brienne swiped at the blood mingling with rainwater, which ran down her eye and ravaged cheek.

“I think only two of them are still after us,” she said, her voice barely louder than the steady whisper of rain, which concealed distances and footfalls. “I doubt the one you hamstrung could keep up.”

Jaime nodded, wasting no words. He wanted to check Brienne’s wound, drop his sword and squeeze her free hand, kiss her. Instead he motioned for Brienne to follow him, set out in the opposite direction from their inn. They would double back once they were certain to have shaken off pursuit. 

They were thoroughly soaked, tired, footsore, and more than a little out of sorts by the time Jaime deemed it safe to leave Brienne to keep watch under a sagging eave, while he slipped up to their room, collected their meager belongings, and snuck out through the kitchen, past the privies, over the garden wall, and back around to where Brienne waited. Their things had looked undisturbed, but Jaime knew better than to assume they hadn’t been searched, felt little compunction about not leaving any coin for the innkeeper. The man would sell information about the two Westerosi to whomever came asking, and more than make up for the loss. 

Jaime chose not to share this with Brienne. The stubborn wench would insist on marching back and squaring what they owed in person. She looked tired and pale under her freckles, and followed after Jaime meekly enough. 

Jaime chose the shabbiest portside inn he could find in the rain, which was coming down in sheets now. The serving girl who brought clean cloths, hot water, and vinegar to wash out the cut on Brienne’s brow wore a bronze collar too big for her skinny neck and small head. It didn’t seem to occur to her to simply slip the vile thing off and run.

“Do you understand my words?” Jaime demanded in the Common Tongue. The girl nodded, eyes on the splintered floorboards – the inn was too mean even for rushes. “I will give you a silver coin if anyone asks after new guests, and you tell them nobody new is staying here this night.” 

The girl glanced up, a skeptical gleam in her eye. Her gaze cleared when Jaime held up a silver stag. She reached for it, but Jaime lifted it out of her reach, raised an eyebrow. The girl scowled for only a moment before she pelted off, the promise of money her master wouldn’t know about lending wind to her little sails. 

“As much as it pains me to admit it, my father was right,” Jaime grumbled while he and Brienne struggled out of their wet outer garments. He soaked a cloth square in vinegar while Brienne dabbed at her wound with another square dipped in clean water. “These Pentoshi really are spice lords and cheese kings. They build palaces out of brick and tile and more gold plate than Casterly Rock ever held, give their so-called prince a pride of lions to which they can later feed him, think a little oil puts them a cut above the dyed beards of the Tyroshi, and call their slaves ‘servants,’ as if that makes a difference. The Volantene have come down in the world, but I saw more natural majesty at the mouth of the Rhoyne than in ten of these overgrown houses the Pentoshi are pleased to call manses.” 

“Those men who attacked us died for Pentoshi coin, just as men died for their lords back home,” Brienne replied as Jaime passed her the vinegar-soaked cloth. She bit her lip when the vinegar touched raw flesh. Jaime’s fingers itched to soothe her. “Who do you think sent them?”

Jaime shrugged with more ease than he felt. “We’ve blundered our way through half the Free Cities asking after a Westerosi girl. Rumors do seem to fly across the Narrow Sea, and the king’s Master of Whisperers had a connection to Pentos. Might be one of his bigger birds who tried to net us, might be someone looking to curry favor with one Targaryen or another.”

Brienne picked up a dry piece of cloth, folded it into a strip. Jaime held out his hand, realized it was trembling, pressed the cloth to the edges of Brienne’s clean wound gently before she could see it, while she wound the cloth around her head, tied it behind her right ear. 

When she was done, Jaime dropped his hand from Brienne’s brow to her chin, which he tilted up until the light from the room’s one oil lamp fell on her cheeks, still sallow but with a little color returning to them. She blushed so easily, seeing her pale disconcerted Jaime.

“All right?” Jaime asked softly. 

Brienne nodded, tight-lipped with determination not to let a little sword slash slow her down. Jaime kissed her brow. She giggled as his beard tickled her nose.

The serving girl didn’t knock before she brought in a flagon of amber wine, bread, cheese, and a few apples. 

“Tomorrow we will inquire after a ship to Braavos,” Jaime told Brienne while the girl laid out the food, gathered up the bloody cloths and basin of lukewarm water, and scurried out. 

Brienne was frowning.

“Tomorrow we will buy a pair of the cheapest nags we can find and head out the Sunrise Gate,” Jaime said once they were alone. He smiled at Brienne’s departing frown. “I will give her the coin I promised her, but that doesn’t mean I trust her one whit. A lesson these cheese princes might take to heart.” 

Brienne mulled this over. “There ought to be caravans we can join, maybe hire ourselves out as guards. We would have time to spar mornings and evenings.” She managed a tired smile. “It will be nice to ride again. No greensickness on the road.” 

Jaime winked, offered Brienne a bread roll. She flushed a little at his wink as she split it and passed him back half, while Jaime reached for the cheese and gave it a dubious sniff.


	6. Norvos

Brienne liked Norvos or Great Norvos, as its proud inhabitants and only they called it. She liked it possibly more than she should. The feeling – both her affection for this strange new city and the reasons behind it – were a sweet ache in Brienne’s breast.

Norvos and the road which had led Jaime and her there reminded Brienne of home.

Reaped and picked clean, the fields under meager stubble east of Pentos, interspersed with orchards full of trees wrapped in straw in anticipation of the chill which passed for Winter that far south – they almost could have been the wheat fields and apple trees of Tarth and Highgarden, the fertile, abundant, earthy smells and sights of Brienne’s childhood and youth. 

Brienne was still young, but she did not feel it. Not after she had been held captive more than once, been mutilated and terrified, seen her lady come back an abomination and die a second, screeching death. Of late, Brienne found that sleep came to her most easily and stayed the longest when Jaime was there, beside her, with her.

Some days Brienne felt as old as the hills which had risen from the Pentoshi Flatlands, a gently rolling terrain intercut by rushing rivers, which converged many leagues south to become the mighty Rhoyne. Tame woods and pastures, farms and hamlets festooned those hills, ringed by walls made of white stucco rather than thick wooden planks or solid stone. More a marker of territory than a palisade for protection. When the Dothraki roamed there, they came with threats rather than true violence and went away meekly enough, laden with gifts. The smallfolk were fat and content. Brienne wished fervently that they never knew war such as she had seen wrought against smallfolk in the Riverlands or heard of on her ravaged and scorched island. 

Bestriding a river loud and quick rather than formidable, affectionately called the Wild Daughter, Norvos was not truly a great city. Like its surroundings, it was more quiet than boisterous, more comfortable than ambitious, more staid than expansive. The Norvoshi dyed and styled their moustaches in a way remarkably similar to the styles of Pentos and Tyrosh, yet they claimed their fashions were entirely different. One of the three great bells which tolled the hour sounded like a woman’s merry laughter, while the other two resembled the voices of men, self-important rather than warlike. The Norvoshi traded in fine cloths and wheat and fruit. Their city guards waddled down steep, cobbled streets on splayed feet, prosperous paunches carried in front like standards of office.

Brienne envied them their comfort and complacency, their quiet certainty that all was well in their corner of the wide world, even as she squirmed inwardly at how staid and peaceful and protected it all was. Sometimes she felt certain everyone was staring at her with her scars and Jaime with his missing hand. Brienne always felt the eyes of others on her, but whenever she glanced around herself in Norvos, all she saw were smooth-skinned women and luxuriantly mustachioed men, who paid no mind to aught but their own pleasant pursuits. 

The Bearded Priests proved the only discordant note in the song of calm which was Norvos, their demanding god obscure, their purpose unclear (mercenaries? holy knights of a sort? the true city watch?), their longaxes and hairy scowls a deterrent to conversation. Yet even they did not disturb Brienne. Norvos seemed to her impervious to harm.

In the mornings, Jaime’s arm lying heavy on her while the sound of the first, deepest bell echoed over the city, or late at night, Jaime’s beard tickling her while he kissed along the scars on her neck and down to her breasts, and no sounds of brawls or drunken revel came from the street, all souls at home and abed early, Brienne wondered if they might not just… stay. Stay and live, here, in peace, chafing only under the burden of their abandoned and failed quest. 

During the day, inquiring after Arya Stark while ambling from market to tavern to inn to temple Brienne knew her fancies of early morning and deepest night were folly. The quest might prove endless and pointless, but it could not be simply laid down like a saddlebag grown too heavy to carry. Nor was there room in placid Norvos for the enormity of the quest and what it meant to Brienne. 

The Winter festival in Norvos meant a bracing breeze come down from the hills, wintercakes tough and chewy on the outside but soft and sweet within ( _Like you, wench_ , Jaime teased and tried to steal her last bite of cake, infuriating man), and dancing bears led down the wide, shallow stone steps which connected the clean warrens by the Noyne to the airy houses of the wealthy merchants in the High City on the hill. 

The bears and Brienne were the only ones not enjoying the festivities. The bears roared as their masters tugged them along by rings fitted into the beasts’ snouts, their paws heavy and reluctant on the shallow steps, their rumps ludicrously raised as they negotiated a swaying descent. 

Brienne wanted to take the laughing amusement of the Norvoshi inside herself and make it hers, but her whole being resisted. She pitied the bears and fought the urge to withdraw, away from the stone steps and the crowd, well out of reach of the bears’ claws. The wintercake sat heavy in her stomach.

At her side, Jaime uttered a noise halfway between a laugh and a choke, bent over. Brienne leant over him, patted his back gently, concerned. Jaime straightened after a moment, his eyes watering, his mouth twisting in an approximation of a smile. 

“Gods, they do stink! Festival or no, the stench is a bit much.” Jaime's voice aimed for levity but fell short of the mark, a cracked chortle. 

The bears did indeed stink, though their owners had put garlands of flowers on their ears and collars. The stench conjured up an overcast sky, voices baying for blood and death, snarling at Brienne, helpless with only a wooden sword in her hand. 

“You came back for me,” she said, scarcely knowing she spoke. It was still a wonder to her, would always be a wonder, that she remained alive and Jaime had returned to fetch her away.

Jaime’s eyes were still watering, but he managed a crooked smile. They both knew that if they’d made it as far as Norvos, they could not avoid visiting the next Free City to the east. The prospect of visiting the place which had spawned Vargo Hoat had made Norvos seem that much sweeter to them, a belated Summer of their quest. 

Brienne squeezed Jaime’s arm, and he kissed her mangled cheek, as was his habit, almost a part of their quest. Simple gestures of constancy and affection, while bears cried and the crowd roared its gross pleasure around them.


	7. Qohor

“Brienne, have I ever told you about the manner of Vargo Hoat’s death?”

There was nothing _wrong_ in Qohor. Jaime reminded himself of that several times every day since their arrival. The city was inhabited by craftsmen, merchants, slaves. No Qohorik from whom Jaime had requested a mug of ale, a bowl of mutton stew, a whetstone or inquired whether they had seen a Westerosi maid of three-and-ten (time passed swiftly), none of them slobbered or mangled their words. Or attempted to take Jaime and Brienne prisoner. 

They did worship either the shaggy black goat whose statue with singed hoofs stood on the market square or R’hllor, the fire god Jaime had considered a mummers’ tale back when Thoros of Myr had invoked him to light Thoros’ sword on fire before battle. R’hllor had been but a story before Brienne had told Jaime, haltingly and swallowing tears long held back, about Renly Baratheon’s death at the hands of a shadow. Before they’d faced Catelyn Stark risen from the dead, reforged into something terrible. 

Jaime had been disinterested in the gods at the best of times, had become outright suspicious of them since arriving in this city on the edge of a great forest easily ten times the size of the Kingswood, the gilded canopy of its leaves unaffected by the seasons and covering only darkness, shadows amassed between huge tree trunks. Seven hells, even their river was called the Darkling Daughter! 

Jaime’s distaste for any and all gods worsened when the followers of the so-called Lord of Light staged nighttime processions through Qohor, waving their torches perilously close to the striped canvas awnings of taverns and brothels. Meanwhile worshippers of the Black Goat gathered in dark knots in the vicinity of R’hllor’s red temple, whispered grim words and made gestures invoking ill fortune in the rival temple’s direction. 

There was nothing _wrong_ in Qohor, despite its people’s poor taste in deities. Monsters were born everywhere, Jaime had dealt with a sufficiently wide assortment of them to know. Yet Jaime’s assurances to himself, repeated as regularly as prayers upon waking and before every meal, could not drown out the dull throb in his stump, the tightness as of an iron band clamped around his brow. The very air of Qohor sat ill in Jaime’s lungs, burned his nostrils like cinders. 

He looked now at Brienne where she sat across the tavern table in the mild Winter sun, found her eyes wide and blue, red at the rims. She hadn’t been crying, Jaime would have staked his life on it. Qohor’s very name brought back nothing but pain to Brienne as well, nor could she hold it at bay, with her soft heart and thin skin. 

“No.” She sounded dazed, wondering. “You only said he was dead. I assumed he was… slain by an enemy.”

Jaime grinned. His face felt tight as a drum skin. He found, once he began telling the story, that he did not truly wish to share every lurid detail with Brienne. He mentioned only the essential: Hoat’s infected ear, the desertion of his men, Gregor Clegane and roast goat, Hoat’s severed head, recognizable only by its beard, turned at last into food for any fish in the God’s Eye stupid enough to eat it. 

Brienne was white as goat’s cheese under her freckles by the time Jaime’s tale was done. She made no move to touch the quail, squash, and parsnip stew the tavern keeper had brought them. Jaime forced a few spoonfuls into his mouth, but they tasted like ash and old grease. 

He pushed away his bowl with a sigh. “I cannot eat meat here. It all tastes goaty.”

Brienne remained silent. Jaime glanced up, wondering if he had finally gone too far, said too much. 

She stared at the tavern wall past his shoulder, eyes as vague and unfocused as the clear sky.

“You never call me ‘wench’ since we arrived,” she said at last. Her mouth jerked in a poor semblance of a brief smile. “I… I miss that. You never touch me. Not here. I miss that too.”

Brienne’s eyes found Jaime’s, her hand found his stump resting on the table. “This place…” she began, fingers shy on the mess of scars at the end of his right arm.

“It makes me feel not myself,” Jaime blurted out. The truth at last, simpler and less weighty than it had seemed. “It’s in my head, day and night. Like we are living, eating, sleeping in the Goat’s stinking gut, and there is no way out.”

Brienne winced. Her fingers folded around Jaime’s stump, gentle, firm. 

“I do not think Arya Stark was ever here, Jaime,” she said, keeping her voice low, always cautious. “We had to ask after her, but I do not believe she ever came this far east.” 

“Why should she?” Jaime quipped, the discomfort and strain of the past days dislodged inside him at last, giving way to a torrent of words, a release of anger that he had been made to feel so helpless and pent up in his own skin by Qohorik ways. Again. “If she lives still, Ned Stark’s daughter must know better than to seek shelter in any city which worships small cattle. Or keeps bought eunuchs to defend it, because their predecessors many times removed once turned away some Dothraki. Or whose blacksmiths pass off melding paint with metal as forging Valyrian steel.” 

Jaime’s grin turned wry. “Too bad you sold your sword to pay for our passage across the Narrow Sea, wench. I’d like to see these blacksmiths’ faces if ever they saw the real thing.” 

Brienne huffed, and rolled her eyes, and squeezed Jaime’s stump warmly. The pale sun the color of weak ale shone over Qohor, as it did everywhere else. The morrow would be a good day to drag Stubborn (Brienne’s Pentoshi mount, named by Jaime in spite of Brienne’s huffing) and Persistent (Jaime’s, named by Brienne in retaliation and as a didactic point on the virtues of certain dubiously bred yet resilient horses) out of their comfortable stable, and venture onto the paved road running up the left bank of the Darkwash, riding north to the Axe and the Shivering Sea, into the arms of true Winter.


	8. Braavos

Brienne was struck by how Braavos presented itself to visiting strangers and its people alike as a male city. The other Free Cities were proud to call themselves and the rivers they straddled daughters and sisters. They reveled in their softness and opulence and secrets. 

Braavos was guarded by a granite colossus. The men who ruled it passed silently along the green canals or on them, in slim serpent boats, dressed in sober garb in shades of charcoal and fog, deep water and darkest night. The armed bravos who protected them fought as though they danced and wore motley, yet their blades were always sharp. No Braavosi swordsman ever shied away from a fight, on however slight a pretext. 

The Braavosi liked to remind visitors that theirs was a city older than King’s Landing, a city which had defied rule by Valyrian dragon riders, a city safer behind its Titan, in its lagoon, than any Westerosi castle with high stone walls. If the Volantene claimed their city was the last glowing ember of Old Valyria, the Braavosi stood greatly on their independence, saw the other Free Cities as mere effigies of past glory, cities caught in amber. 

Yet the steel-sharp, granite-hard city of bankers and merchants and shipbuilders had a soft, female heart. Its first temple had been built by Moonsingers, a gentle faith, its adherents pleased to flank their great temple’s gates by pale marble maidens as tall as the statues of former Sealords which lined the Great Canal. Courtesans glided along canals on barges and boats, coyly hidden behind shimmering silk veils, and seemed to wield as much power as the justiciars and key-holders of the Sealord’s council. The only way to walk the quays and bridges and narrow streets of Braavos in peace after sundown was to go unarmed, as defenseless as a maid, for a sword on one’s hip meant any bravo could challenge the wanderer to a duel.

Since arriving in this city of contradictions, Jaime and Brienne hadn’t gone out much at night. They recoiled against leaving their garret in Silty Town unarmed, nor was going abroad as a babe might certain protection against robbery, rapine, a slit throat, and a quiet tumble into a canal, face-first. Wandering the city during the short days shrouded in fog as thick as mushroom soup, inquiring after Arya Stark, proved no mean feat, not least because they had also to avoid drawing the attention of the city watch. 

Jaime and Brienne had made good time riding north from Qohor to the Axe, found a fishing village by a freshwater spring in a small cove, and waited. An Ibbenese whaler had picked them up, its stench heralding its arrival before it had become visible between the choppy sea and the low sky. The captain had taken Stubborn and Persistent in payment for safe passage west, then he’d offered Jaime half a dozen seal skins if Jaime would sell him Brienne. His face already turning green, Jaime had shown the man his sharp steel, kept himself and Brienne in their cramped cabin thereafter, eating only the food they’d bought in the village, nothing the ship’s cook had sent them. 

The captain had harbored no intention of stopping in Lorath, nor did that isolated city hold out much promise for Jaime and Brienne’s quest. The night before they had been due to drop anchor in Ragman’s Harbor, Jaime had given his Myrish far-eye as a bribe to a sailor who’d had enough of the whaling life. The man had stolen a boat and rowed himself, Jaime, and Brienne ashore on one of Braavos’ many small wharves, before the ship could pass quarantine and customs, and the presence of two Westerosi so far from home and coming from the east arouse unwanted curiosity. 

The rising sun burning away the fog, Jaime had sighed in contentment to be able to piss on solid ground again, jested that the Titan of Braavos, outlined against the lightening sky, must piss boiling oil on any ship attempting a head-on assault on the city. Keeping watch while Jaime had relieved himself against a wharfside inn’s wall, Brienne had blushed, had had to admit the scheme sounded plausible. 

So the days strung themselves together while Jaime and Brienne went about their inquiries, slinked around the city like thieves or brigands, tried to pass undetected yet with honor: the perilous weft and warp of life in the Free Cities. 

Jaime’s mounting impatience was to thank for their visit to the House of Black and White.

Their coin dwindling fast, the city yielding no better answers than any other place they’d visited, the perennial fog making Jaime cough at night like an old man, he suggested they inquire after Arya Stark in the house of the Many-Faced God, one midday while he shared a bowl of clam and fennel stew and a hunk of black bread with Brienne, huddled on a narrow bench by the fire in a cheap inn, while all around them the talk was mostly about a looming trade war with Lorath. 

“If the girl is dead, they would know, their god _is_ death,” Jaime argued. “If she isn’t, well… She must want quite a few people dead, and may have gone there to say a prayer.” 

Brienne had visited the Isle of the Gods before, comforted a little to be able to enter the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea and pray to the Warrior, the Mother, and the Crone. Jaime preferred to wait for her outside, especially on those rare sunny days of Winter, when he could warm himself in the thin sunlight like a tomcat lolling on a garden wall. 

The temple of the Many-Faced God with its particolored doors and absence of windows filled Brienne with foreboding. It seemed oddly fitting for Braavos, the city of many gods and languages and faces, that the priest who came out to hear Brienne’s query was a mere girl, too small and thin to be much older than Arya herself, yet with many sorrowful years packed tight behind her big eyes. 

Brienne explained her quest, asked if a Westerosi maid of three-and-ten with a long face and dark hair had sought solace or release from the Many-Faced God. The shaggy Black Goat of Qohor breathed down on her in disdain from its stony plinth, a slim maid as pale as the moon half turned her back on Brienne, and the Stranger sneered at her, his mouthful of long teeth barely glimpsed within the shadows which seemed to swarm around his statue.

The girl in priest’s robes watched Brienne unblinking before she shook her head. 

“I mean the girl no harm,” Brienne pleaded, feeling desperate and afraid in this place where men and women came to lay down all their burdens. “I wish only to find her and keep her safe. For her lady mother’s sake. For her sake and for mine.” 

The girl still said nothing. Brienne turned to leave with a murmured thanks.

She was almost at the black and white door when the girl tugged on the end of her jerkin. She held up a coin when Brienne turned, dropped it on the floor before Brienne could take it. Its noise on the cobbles sounded indecently loud in the hushed space.

When Brienne looked up, coin in hand, the girl was gone.

Outside, the fog thickening again after a sunny morning, Brienne examined the coin while Jaime pelted her with questions. 

One side of the coin bore the carven image of a fat man in rich robes, a bolt of cloth draped over his outstretched arm. The other side showed three islands. The name of a city most deemed too insignificant to visit arched proudly, almost defiantly over the archipelago.


	9. Lorath

Lorath was a backwater, in the truest sense of the word.

So isolated that few went there even from Braavos, the nearest of the other Free Cities, its islands gnawed at year round by the Shivering Sea, its claim to mercantile greatness resting on Lorathi velvet traded for ivory, fur, and obsidian, Lorath failed to impress anyone but its self-satisfied denizens with its foothold in the world of men. Being neighbor to Braavos did not help. 

The best thing Jaime could say about Lorath was that it spared him spending any more time on ships tossed about on wintry seas, spewing the contents of his stomach with every watch cried by the crew. The wench had tended to him with unwavering patience and gentleness, but Jaime was heartily sick of being greensick. 

He was sitting in an inn, trying to decide whether a local green ale made from seaweed was as offensive to the taste as it was to the eye and nose, when Brienne returned from her fateful errand. She looked dazed and unsteady on her feet, as though she’d been repeatedly slapped in the face while attempting to cross the deck of a ship in a storm.

Jaime scrambled to his feet, ordered her a cup of whatever passed for mead in Lorath, pushed the tankard of green ale away with some relief. Brienne’s cup sat untouched by her elbow as she stared at the scoured surface of the trestle table.

“Well?” Jaime demanded, impatience warring with concern. “Was it she? What did she say?”

Brienne’s nod was leaden. “It was she. She…” 

Brienne shook herself like a wet dog, made an effort to gather her strength. “She looked older than three-and-ten, her hair was fair, and her face was pretty and more round than long, but she was Arya Stark. She knew things about Lady Catelyn and Robb Stark… Winterfell and the court in King’s Landing…”

Anyone could dye their hair, Jaime knew. A girl might grow. But only one sort of people knew how to change their faces at will. 

Jaime covered Brienne’s hand, white-knuckled as she squeezed it into a fist on the tabletop, with his hand. He’d let Brienne meet the girl alone, for he knew Brienne’s fearful anticipation, her quest’s completion within reach at last, as well as the possibility that Arya Stark might prove reluctant to place herself under a Lannister’s protection. 

“She wouldn’t come,” Jaime said kindly. “Would she?”

Brienne’s face was red, her voice a strangled whisper. “She said it has been a long time since she needed anyone but herself to keep her safe. She believed that I was pledged to Lady Catelyn to fetch her back, but she didn’t care about my vow. She’s heard about the burning of Winterfell, the… the murders at the Twins. She said when she did return to Westeros, it would be under her own wind and for her own purpose, not to preserve some hedge knight’s honor.”

At that, Brienne gave up the struggle, laid her head down on the table, and wept bitterly. Jaime caressed her heaving shoulders, her hair, her clenched fist, murmured nonsensically, more soothing noises than words with meaning. Brienne’s grief was great and born of equal parts failure (or so she thought) and relief (though she’d never admit it). Jaime was not truly surprised their quest had come to this, nor was he bereft of ideas as to what they should do next.

When Brienne’s storm had abated for the nonce, Jaime kept stroking her hair, her wet cheek and clenched hand. 

“Brienne, you did not fail.” She drew breath, whether to sob or demur Jaime did not pause to discover. “You vowed to find the Stark girls and keep them safe. You found them. Sansa Stark was as safe as she could be when we left Westeros, and Arya Stark sounds much the same, if not better. They have no hearth, home or family left, but they are making the most of their situation. As are we. We cannot return home, with or without Starks in tow. But there are still places we can go.” 

Brienne looked up, face wet and red, eyes like stones. “Where, Jaime? Where? A life without honor is no life. No place is home to those who break their vows.”

Jaime wanted to shake her. He kept his voice soft. “That’s my pig-headed wench. Never listens to reason, always knows best, if it kills her. Brienne, you have fulfilled your vow as well as any knight of song could have done. The Stark girls do not need your protection, and your honor remains intact. As for life and home… We have been wandering the Free Cities for over a year, eating and sleeping, being greensick and fucking, feeding dwarf elephants and spoiling Braavosi wharf cats so they follow you everywhere. It’s been a better life than most people get, better than anything I could have imagined since before I was unburdened of a hand. There is still much of the world we haven’t seen, in which to make a home.”

He expected argument, recrimination, a renewed storm of tears. The old, hard words: easy choices, easy ways out, a man without honor. 

Brienne stared at him unblinking, seeing something other than Jaime.

“She said something odd before she left me,” Brienne whispered. “Arya Stark. She said that we should not linger in Lorath, that very soon the Archon’s men would take an undue interest in anyone newly arrived in the city.” 

Jaime grimaced. So the girl was indeed one of the Faceless Men, had contracted to aid Braavos’ war against Lorath from inside the enemy camp. That she had chosen to share this knowledge with Brienne was proof enough that Brienne’s honor lived still, whether Arya Stark and the wide world acknowledged it or not. An argument Jaime would store up for the inevitable future time when Brienne’s doubts assailed her again, and she castigated herself anew for not finding the younger Stark girl before the little wolf could choose to become an assassin for hire.

“As I was saying,” Jaime pursued, stroking the taut-skinned knuckles of Brienne’s fist. “All the more reason to find the first ship leaving for Braavos. We’ll sail between the Titan’s legs this time, stay till the end of Winter. Maybe we could trade swordplay lessons with a willing bravo, hire ourselves out to some city official looking to break the tedium of all that water dancing. Once Spring comes, there will be ships going to Qarth and the Jade Sea, Sothoryos and Ulthos. We’ll give Slaver’s Bay a wide berth and keep sailing till we find a good place. For us.” 

Brienne loosened her fist, though she did not turn her hand palm up under Jaime’s. Not yet, not so quickly. Not his wench. 

“How will you manage such a long journey, Jaime?” She didn’t smile, but there was a welcome softness in her voice, under the rawness of weeping. “You turned quite green during the short passage from Braavos.”

Jaime made a face, half stroked, half pinched her hand. “I’ve been told southern seas make for smoother sailing, you impossible wench, and I’ve got used to worse than an upset stomach since this thrice-damned quest began.” 

Brienne’s laugh was not a laugh, not quite, not even a proper huff. But her face, scrunched up in amusement despite her wintry mood and snotty nose, held a true promise of smooth sailing for Jaime, wherever strange winds might blow them off course.


End file.
